Culture and Arts Policy Institute

Fiscally Standardized Cities Dataset

The Fiscally Standardized Cities (FiSC) database makes it possible to compare local government finances for over 200 of the largest US cities across 115 categories of revenues, expenditures, debt, and assets. The FiSC estimates are critical for making meaningful fiscal comparisons at the city level, because the delivery of public services is organized in very different ways in different cities. While some city governments provide their residents and businesses with a full array of public services, others share the responsibility with a variety of overlying independent governments. Fiscal comparisons across central city municipal governments alone can thus be highly misleading.